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Trump’s Facebook and Instagram posting suspension is obviously the biggest Facebook news this week. It’s so big that you might have missed Facebook acknowledging the dwindling power of the “Like” as a performance metric.
- On Wednesday, Facebook launched a redesigned Pages layout. The “Like” button has disappeared from the main Page...but the “Follow” button became way more prominent.
Big deal: Just like, you know, everything these days, Likes aren’t what they used to be.
- “While Likes still do serve a purpose, they're no longer a key indicator of reach or performance,” per Social Media Today.
- That’s partially due to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm introduced in 2013.
My takeaway: Facebook knew it might be better off without Likes in 2019, when it briefly tested removing them from Instagram—but perhaps that felt like ripping off a Band-Aid too quickly. Keep an eye out for a slow and steady devaluation of the metric your average social media user arguably craves the most.